Assault on Rossak

The Assault on Rossak was an attack on the planet Rossak carried out by cymek forces in 201 BG. It was a retaliation for the death of the Titan Barbarossa, who had been killed by the Sorceress Heoma during the liberation of Giedi Prime. Led by the Titan Agamemnon, the assault was driven off by the telepathic Sorceresses under Zufa Cenva, though it cost the jungle world dearly.

Prelude#

The courtier Dante informed the Titans that the woman who had killed the Titan Barbarossa during the fighting over Giedi Prime was called a Sorceress and came from Rossak. After a brief council the Titans resolved that Agamemnon would lead Juno and Xerxes against the planet, and Agamemnon won permission from Omnius to launch the strike against the Sorceress homeworld with a force of neo-cymeks.

The assault#

Agamemnon led the fleet that followed the cymeks, sleek projectiles with enormous engines heavily loaded with artillery. The orbiting Rossak sentry stations detected the attackers, but the picket ships and perimeter sentries never had a chance to fire, and only a few surface-based warships and armored kindjals rose to defend the system.

At that time Zufa Cenva was with her lover Aurelius Venport, and she prompted him to evacuate the people. Venport led the unskilled population to his personal supply caches, shelters, and processing huts in the jungles, making certain each woman had a breathing mask, while Zufa gathered her Sorceress commandos inside an internal room he had designed for business meetings. As the first robotic salvos struck the defensive stations above Rossak, Agamemnon's ships plunged toward the smoky atmosphere, with Xerxes leading the vanguard as he had at the Battle of Zimia. The three Titans took powerful armed glider-forms while the neo-cymeks wore destructive combat bodies. Landers crashed into the wilderness and began burning the foliage with fireguns, and Xerxes launched fifteen projectiles upon a landing area while plasma grenades incinerated a pathway toward the tunnel cities.

The Sorceresses' defense#

Zufa sent the Sorceress Camio to strike the first blow. Camio heard a projectile whistle in and pressed herself against the tunnel wall as it struck the cliffside, then loosed a mindstorm that boiled the brains of the three closest neo-cymeks and damaged two others beginning to climb the cliff, removing five cymeks from the battle. Four more Sorceresses emerged to join the fight. The cymeks again realized that the Sorceresses were a dangerous foe, and Silin, the sixth volunteer, returned alive to find nothing left to destroy because the machines had begun to retreat. The attack was driven off, but, as with many other raids against League planets, the cost to Rossak was severe: many Sorceresses were killed and large parts of the jungle were burned.

Aftermath#

In time the scattered refugees returned, brought back by Aurelius Venport. Under his supervision the people of Rossak rebuilt and repaired the cliff cities with pride and confidence, knowing they had stood against the thinking machines. The assault formed part of the wider war between the League of Nobles and the Synchronized Empire that would culminate in the Butlerian Jihad.